BY SAM WAINWRIGHT
SYDNEY — Seventy-two workers at the Metroshelf factory in Revesby, in Sydney's west, have won their jobs back after a two-month struggle.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union had been pursuing an unfair dismissal claim against the company before the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. On August 7 the company told the AMWU negotiating team that it was backing down and would reinstate all the sacked workers.
The dispute began when most of the workers left their union, the Australian Workers Union, and signed up with the AMWU. The workers were sick of the close relationship that had developed between management and the AWU's officials and organisers.
Fifty of the workers were sacked on May 28, only three days after the workplace delegate supplied management with a list of AMWU members at the site. All the workers are convinced that they were sacked purely because of their union membership.
Twenty two of their workmates struck in solidarity, and on June 15 they were also sacked.
Around 20 workers, mostly the remnant AWU membership, continued to work, under advise from their union. AWU officials even argued against the sacked workers' reinstatement at the commission.
On June 7, management brought in 55 strikebreakers supplied by the labour hire company Workforce International. Despite the use of scabs, Metroshelf management was keen to get the second group of 22 workers back on the job, because it included most of the leading hands and other more experienced workers.
Twice the company offered to nominally reinstate the original 50 workers in order to negotiate a better redundancy package, provided the other 22 went back to work.
On both occasions the workers rejected this divide and rule tactic and voted unanimously to stay outside the gates.
All of the sacked workers were Vietnamese Australians and they have no doubt that racist sentiment was used to divide the workers.
Many of the sacked workers reported that before the dispute white workers were treated favourably by management. During the 11 long weeks camped outside the factory gates the picketing workers were taunted and abused and even had to endure Nazi salutes.
On some occasions the scabs drove their cars into the workers and their supporters and threatened them with wheel braces and other weapons.
The bravery and determination of the workers inspired much community support. On a number of occasions contingents of supporters from the Socialist Alliance, students from the University of Western Sydney's Bankstown campus and others joined the picket line at 6am.
By the last week of July the picketing of the site by community supporters was escalating and blocking access for hours at a time.
This, combined with the threat by leaders of the Vietnamese community to put pressure on Metroshelf's customers, seems to have forced management's capitulation.
In the agreement signed with the AMWU, Metroshelf has agreed to reinstate all of the sacked workers with back pay for the period they were sacked.
In a desperate attempt to diffuse the symbolism of the workers' triumphant return to work, management has asked half the workers to return on August 13, and the other half two days later. Community supporters are planning to gather outside the gates to give the returning workers a rousing reception.